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Tag Archives for technology

Today’s casual prompt is “viral”, which represents a trend that is deeply, intensely boring to me. I am truly tired of seeing YouTube videos on our nightly TV newscast, for example. A baby bear in a toddler’s plastic pool: viral! But important or a complete waste of brain cells?

I’ve come to the conclusion that my head is full to capacity. When new stuff enters, old stuff leaks out. I love baby bears, but that 50 second video (the likes of which I’ve seen 3,487 times) just squeezed out my memory of what I wore on my first day of school. Bloody hell!

So I scroll more aggressively when I’m looking at my news feed or reading news sources online. Do I really need to know what disturbing truth lies behind a C-list celebrity’s haircut? Or where the bodies were discovered in a murder case I’ve never heard about and is completely irrelevant to my life? Or which new study will give me the definitive forever answer to the question: “Is coffee good for you or killing you slowly?”

So welcome, Looking out the Real Window at Real Random things, like seagulls pecking at a dead fish on the beach. Good-bye viral videos, except for kitten ones, which never get old.

Only tangentially related to the prompt, but related to technology, are the first two of this small collection of favourite cartoons:

On first viewing, I thought this unusual short film, made by UCLA students in 1958, was a contemporary film student submission, done in the style of the 50s and with a theme that resonates today: How automation and technology fill our lives with “noise” and how we often sacrifice self-awareness and intimacy for convenience and high tech.